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Benjamin Corey confronts our vision of Jesus head-on, asking the hard question: Is what we see and hear in the modern church all there is to the message of Jesus or is there a more radical side to Jesus than we have been led to believe?

Get ready to encounter a Jesus that is determined to turn over the tables of a stale, ineffective and boring gospel that seeks to escape from the world instead of transforming it.

This radical Jesus and His message...

Invites us to reorient our lives not on Christian religion, but on the person of Jesus

Calls us to live out faith in the context of authentic community with others, instead of isolation

Includes the excluded and invites the outcast to have a seat at the table

Responds to enemies with a radical, unexplainable love

Undiluted will invite you to step out of your comfort zone and into a process of rediscovering the radical, counter cultural, and life-changing message of Jesus. As you do, you’ll discover a more vibrant faith as you embrace an undiluted Jesus and His radical message!

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Editorial Reviews

Review

 Benjamin L. Corey is the fresh voice that will guide the next generation of Jesus followers into a more beautiful expression of Christianity. This book may just save Christianity from us Christians.”

 Frank Schaeffer author of Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God.

Benjamin Corey has a way of capturing the heart of Jesus and his message You’ll find in this book a jolt of full-strength gospel and high-test challenge  along with undiluted encouragement.”

- Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/activist (brianmclaren.net)

About the Author

Benjamin L. Corey is a two-time graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and currently a

doctoral student at Fuller Seminary. Ben can be found writing at his blog, Formerly Fundie, on Patheos.

He is also a contributor to Sojourners, Red Letter Christians, Evangelicals for Social Action, has been a

More About the Author

Benjamin L. Corey, is an Anabaptist author, speaker, and blogger. His first book, Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus, tells the story of his journey out of lifeless religion and into a fresh expression of Christianity. He is also a contributor for Sojourners, Red Letter Christians, Evangelicals for Social Action, Mennonite World Review, The Good Men Project, has been a guest on Huffington Post Live, and is one of the CANA Initiators. Ben is also a syndicated author for MennoNerds, a collective of Mennonite and Anabaptist writers. He is a two-time graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Theology & Missiology) and is currently a Doctor of Missiology/Intercultural Studies student at Fuller Seminary. Ben lives in Auburn, Maine with his wife Tracy and his daughter, Johanna Grace. Connect at www.benjaminlcorey.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Benjamin Corey's Undiluted is unquestionably the best book I have read this year! Through his own personal journey, Corey shows the reader a plain and much needed comparison between the watered-down message of American cultural Christianity and the undiluted message of Jesus Christ, and shows us why the first has little to do with Jesus while the second is offensive and difficult and yet life-giving and transformative in the lives of those who follow the way of Jesus. I was delighted to see that the author uses the same terminology ("Cultural American Christianity") and expresses the same social and biblical concerns that I have been thinking and saying for the last ten years. We have a problem in American Christianity and that is that what we commonly see and call Christianity is actually a gutted amalgamation of enculturated religious points of view and right-wing politics. This watered-down mixture looks absolutely nothing like the Jesus of the New Testament and his way of life. "Jesus began and ended his public ministry the same way: by infuriating the religious conservatives through preaching a radical message that included the excluded and embraced the outcast." (page 54).

Undiluted is wonderful in that it so clearly brings forth the truth that most regular people do not find Jesus offensive - they find American cultural Christianity offensive. Jesus and his teachings are the way of life and are only offensive to those who have built their houses upon the sandy soil of our watered-down and subverted cultural religion. What Undiluted does so well is to remove the American cultural filter from our Bibles and churches and lives and enables us to see the plain teachings of Jesus clearly and simply. The way of Jesus is not easy! It makes demands that cost us dearly.Read more ›

Watered-down food is less tasty, not as nutritional as its counterpart, and less satisfying; but it goes down easier. That is absolutely the best way to describe the type of diluted religiosity Benjamin L. Corey leaves behind in his new book Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus. In a world where it is too easy to be a celebrity Christian blogger with a chip on one’s shoulder, readers will find in Undiluted a hopeful self-criticism as Corey describes his journey away from “church” and into following Jesus.

What I found delightful in Undiluted is its author’s self-deprecating attitude en route to Jesus who can be seen on almost every single page. Here’s an excerpt:

“Growing up in conservative evangelicalism, I was gently led to believe that everyone other than ourselves watered-down the message of Jesus. I remember as a child driving past other churches in the area and asking what made them different from us. When passing the Methodist and Congregational churches, I was told they were simply “social clubs,” and when passing the local Assembly of God I was told that they were “crazy people.” A distorted expression of what it means to follow Jesus was always something they were doing–never something I or we were doing

There were always hard lines about who was in and who was out; and conveniently enough, we always managed to be “in.” We’re often tempted to think that we have it right, and those who are different have it wrong–it’s easy to see someone else as watering down the message of Jesus.

Herein the problem lies. Yes, there’s nothing good about a watered-down, soggy, bland Jesus–but we’ve got to stop pointing to “the others” as the ones responsible for it, and start turning those fingers inward.Read more ›

Writing as an evangelical coming from outside the US (Northern Ireland), I had posted a brief review on amazon.co.uk, but that's the only one so far. The full review is on my blog 'the alternative ulsterman' but I'll post the relevant parts here:

I cannot recall just how or where I came across Benjamin Corey. I discovered his blog at patheos.com some weeks ago while trawling about. Right away I was struck by his words; not just that he is a superb wordsmith, but also of course because of what he says with them, with occasional lines just begging to be quoted for their profundity!

Once I started talking to others about this blogger, both off and online, I realised right away that there was a problem, and it’s this: evangelicals think they have it all correct! Exactly what Corey has been trying to say all along. While we pat ourselves on the back that we do indeed have the truth of the gospel that we preach, we tend also to think that anything else theological we hold dear is just not up for discussion. Even though we have to admit that within the ‘evangelical’ fold (which is not actually written down in any creed anywhere) we have different denominations, with their own separate creeds and slants on things. Since Corey seems to come at things from a different point of view, having confessed he is no longer labelling himself ‘fundamentalist’, he inevitably draws suspicion. Evangelicals can be a very wary and jittery bunch, and anyone not identifying with their grouping is taken with a fair handful of salt. When Corey described the moment he realised he was ‘without a tribe’ I chuckled to myself.

He is viewed by many as “just another one of those ‘liberals”, which brings up so many other cultural problems, and such an attitude defeats his rhetoric before he even speaks.Read more ›